THE STEELFRAME COLLECTION
The Herman Miller Furniture Company
George Nelson, Herman Miller Furniture Company: THE STEELFRAME COLLECTION [Designed by George Nelson for the Herman Miller Furniture Company]. Zeeland, MI: The Herman Miller Furniture Company, [1955]. Original edition. Direct mail promotional poster measuring 20 x 15.5 inches machine folded into quarters [as issued]. Color coded diagrams of the Steelframe collection with specifications. A unmailed, nearly fine example.
20 x 15.5 poster / brochure printed in full color showing the various options and finishes offered for the Steelcase collection in 1955, including all specifications, dimensions and materials for these colorful components. I suspect this information might be useful to some folks out there.
What you make is important. Design is an integral part of business. The product must be honest. You decide what you want to make. There is a market for good design.
— George Nelson
The Herman Miller furniture lines from 1948 has been called the most influential groups of furniture ever manufactured. A rare piece of original ephemera that captures the zeitgeist of Herman Miller Furniture Company at the height of its influence.
In a characteristically wry 1944 correspondence with Herman Miller founder, DJ De Pree, George Nelson wrote that “your reservations on my suitability as a designer for Herman Miller Co., impressed me very much for they seem to be well founded… the question of lack of experience in the commercial furniture field is also important, but here, I am afraid, you and your associates will have to make the decision on your own.” Fast forward four years later, and Nelson once again found himself reflecting on the integrity of the Herman Miller Co., but this time, not as a potential hire but rather as Herman Miller’s founding creative director. In the 1948 introduction to the catalogue for his first ever collection for the company, he writes, “From the viewpoint of the designer, which is the only viewpoint I can assume with any degree of propriety, the Herman Miller Furniture Company is a rather remarkable institution.”
Whatever leap of faith was required of De Pree to hire Nelson, the affinity and mutual respect shared between the two was undeniably fruitful. Nelson credits Herman Miller’s singularity as a result of a “philosophy” or “attitude” compounded of a set of principles—that what you make is important; that design is integral to business; that products must be honest; that only we can decide what we make, and that there is a market for good design—that allow for a degree of autonomy and innovation unavailable to companies driven by the shallow demands of the market or sales. “There is no attempt to conform to the so-called norms of ‘public taste,’ nor any special faith in the methods used to evaluate the ‘buying public.’ The reason many people are struck by the freshness of Herman Miller designs is that the company is not playing follow-the-leader.”
George Nelson (1908 – 1986) possessed one of the most inventive minds of the 20th century. Nelson was one of those rare people who could envision what isn’t there yet. Nelson described his creative abilities as a series of “zaps” – flashes of inspiration and clarity that he turned into innovative design ideas.
One such “zap” came in 1942 when Nelson conceived the first-ever pedestrian shopping mall – now a ubiquitous feature of our architectural landscape – detailed in his “Grass on Main Street” article. Soon after, he pioneered the concept of built-in storage with the storage wall, a system of storage units that rested on slatted platform benches. The first modular storage system ever, it was showcased in Life magazine and caused an immediate sensation in the furniture industry.
In 1946, Nelson became director of design at Herman Miller, a position he held until 1972. While there, Nelson recruited other seminal modern designers, including Charles Eames and Isamu Noguchi. He also developed his own designs, including the Marshmallow Sofa, the Nelson Platform Bench and the first L-shaped desk, a precursor to the present-day workstation. He also created a series of boldly graphic wall clocks and a series of bubble lamps made of self-webbing plastic.
Nelson felt that designers must be “aware of the consequences of their actions on people and society and thus cultivate a broad base of knowledge and understanding.” He was an early environmentalist, one of the first designers to take an interest in new communications technology and a powerful writer and teacher. Perhaps influenced by his friend, Buckminster Fuller, Nelson’s ultimate goal as a designer was “to do much more with much less.”